Updated June 5: When I Can Only Imagine was released in theaters on March 16, Parade.com ran the interview below with Dennis Quaid, who stars in this inspiring true story behind MercyMe’s beloved hit song. If you missed it then, check it out now.

Today, I Can Only Imagine arrives on Digital, and next Tuesday, June 12, it will be available on Blu-ray™ Combo Pack (plus DVD and Digital), DVD, and On Demand from Lionsgate, but first we have a video look at the film.

The home entertainment release of I Can Only Imagine features more than 3 hours of extras including seven deleted scenes, seven in-depth featurettes, an audio commentary, and more.

BLU-RAY / DVD /DIGITAL SPECIAL FEATURES

Seven Deleted Scenes·“MercyMe: The Early Days” Featurette· “Imagine Forgiveness with Bart Millard” Featurette· “Casting I Can Only Imagine” Featurette· “The Power of the Song” Featurette· “Creating Imagine” Featurette· “The Music of Imagine” Featurette

Originally Posted March 15, 2018:I Can Only Imagine is a movie about the power of faith, love, family and music based on the real-life story behind the eponymous song, which became the most-played radio single in Christian music history.

The film tells the inspirational journey that Bart Millard (J. Michael Finley), the lead singer of the Christian band MercyMe, experienced with his troubled father that inspired him to write the song. Their story illustrates that nobody is ever too far from God’s love for a transformational experience.

Parade.com spoke to Dennis Quaid, who plays Bart’s father Arthur, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, about the journey his character took and how inspiring that is.

Were you familiar with the story behind I Can Only Imagine before you got the script?

I was not familiar with the song, or with Bart, or with this group MercyMe. I did a movie called Soul Surfer in Hawaii, about Bethany Hamilton, who lost her arm to a shark while surfing. Her brother was working on it as part of the crew and we became friends.

Jon and Andy Erwin contacted him and he contacted me. He sent me the script. I was profoundly moved by the story. I’m an audience member for the first-time experience when I read the script.

The arc of Arthur’s life in relation to his son and his relationship with him is very challenging, and I had this fear going through my body, which is an indication to me that maybe I should do it because it put me out of my comfort zone because I’m not like this person, but yet, I have to find this person and understand who he was and portray him.

So I said yes. When I got to the set, the real Bart was there for quite a bit of time in between these dates that he had scheduled on the road. I sat him down and had him tell me the story from his mouth. That’s the way I feel I got to Arthur, because Arthur’s not here anymore.

It really wasn’t events — although there are quite a few of them that are not in the movie; I just felt Bart and watched him tell me the story and got the feel from him who Arthur was.

It’s also Bart who is redeemed, I would say. Because he’s the one who was holding on to all [those feelings]. Yes, it’s a story of redemption for them both, who walked through hellfire really to get to that place. Arthur made Bart feel bad about himself, about who he was, his self-worth, and his self-esteem as a person through abuse, physical and emotional, and verbal abuse every day of his childhood and then through his late teens, for whatever reason.

Abusive parents most times were abused kids. Arthur had dreams of his own of being a football player and he felt bitter about that because of circumstance. None of those are excuses or real reasons to me to abuse a child.

Arthur got cancer. Bart had moved out, moved away really for survival. Arthur didn’t tell anybody, so Bart didn’t know, but he had a longing to have a relationship with his son.

Arthur started to really look at his life, I think, that’s when he started to wake up. And through that, he had a spiritual awakening, which led him to prayer; and really in prayer, you can’t lie to yourself. By the time you get to prayer, you’ve already lied to yourself and made excuses about this and that, and then you are really seeking something.

Through Christianity and through Jesus, it started this real change in Arthur because God will give you the path, he’ll show you the path. Then you start to walk it and that’s where it really gets hard.

You’re a musician, so you can relate to songs. What is it about this song that resonates so much with people that it was such a huge seller?

Bart did get to a place where he truly forgave his farther. For Arthur, the hardest part was forgiving himself. Then it just opened up… it was divine intervention. At the end of his life, Arthur and Bart had this close, loving relationship with one another.

When he passed, Bart wrote this song, I Can Only Imagine, which was about his father; not really about Jesus, but it was about his father. It became a huge hit and crossed over out of the faith market. I think the reason it’s such an incredible song is because every person who hears it, and hears the word, they relate to it personally for whatever reason.

At the same time, it’s also a song about hope and joy, and I think the song and the story and, hopefully, the movie, hits people in places that they don’t have words for.

With the life you’ve lived, I thinkyou’re probably somebody who really believes in second chances?

For sure, because I’ve had so many of them. I believe in third, fourth, and fifth chances, too. Yes, that’s what The Rookie was about. It was about second chances; and that happened to be reflective of my own life at the time, or my career.

My favorite movie of yours is The Big Easy. I love it because it had an incongruous romance. It had mystery. It was a family story. The character grew and changed. There was so much that I really liked about it. What are your feelings about it?

When I did that, it was the watershed movie for me. It was originally called Nothing But the Truth and it was set in Chicago. I went to see [director] Jim McBride and he said, “I want to do this in New Orleans.” I knew New Orleans and I had always wanted to do a movie there because it’s another world. That movie changed everything. Ellen Barkin and doing that movie. It was very much like an old-time noir movie. The dialogue was kind of in the style of His Girl Friday and at the same time, it was very modern day. I loved doing that movie.

What’s next?

I’m getting ready to go to the North Pole actually. I’m shooting a series, Fortitude. We’re shooting the interiors in London, and then we go to Svalbard, 200 miles from the North Pole, to shoot the exteriors for three weeks. It’s going to be night for 24 hours for about five to six days when we go there.

AMG/Parade Digital

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